


"how could we know that promises end?"

by talkwordytome



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Break Up, Drabble, Eric Clapton - Freeform, F/M, Music, The X-Files Revival, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Wistful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-08
Updated: 2015-09-08
Packaged: 2018-04-19 19:29:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4758173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talkwordytome/pseuds/talkwordytome
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a little wistful, Eric Clapton-inspired, revival breakup writing on a warm afternoon. (Rated T for some mild profanity and a very brief sexual reference.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	"how could we know that promises end?"

Tom Waits, Springsteen, Fleetwood Mac. Leonard Cohen, Tom Petty, Warren Zevon. Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Janis Joplin. James Taylor. Simon and Garfunkel. Townes Van Zandt. Emmylou Harris. Tracy Chapman. Johnny Cash. Dolly Parton. Gillian Welch. Allison Krauss. Mark Knopfler. If she happened to be feeling nostalgic for teenage years, for combat boots, for heavy makeup and stolen cigarettes—Sex Pistols, Patti Smith, The Ramones, The Clash, Kathleen Hanna, Iggy Pop. It wasn’t Mulder’s favorite genre of music (it wasn’t even hers anymore, not really), but she loved it because it was part of her and Mulder loved it because it made it easy to picture her as the punky kid he never got to know.

“A Catholic girl gone bad,” he’d once teased. “I didn’t think you were that predictable, Scully.”

“We can’t all have your tortured childhood, Mulder,” she’d replied, without looking up from the tattered liner notes of _Horses_.

Mulder was almost always the one to make the mixtapes (and, eventually, CDs). He had a knack for arranging songs in a way that Scully knew she didn’t; he knew how to start a mix out strong, thumping, how to ease into something slower, how to build again, how to end in a place that left you full and aching. 

(This was also Mulder’s method for sex, she eventually discovered, and as it turned out—he had a knack for that, too.)

During the thousands of hours they racked up over the course of countless car trips, they learned things about each other. They both liked singing along; on lucky days, they could harmonize. Scully preferred certain genres at different times of day; Mulder’s tastes were as erratic and moody as he was. Mulder was inclined to skip around, pop one tape or CD out in exchange of another, until he found what he was looking for; if Scully had her way, she’d listen to the same mix over and over and over again. Once, as a Springsteen CD started over and Mulder prepared to switch it out for something else, Scully grabbed his wrist and—voice raised over piano and harmonica—said, “You don’t fuck with ‘Thunder Road’.” 

Sometime in the mid-90s, they were driving God-knows-where, and it was late. Two, three a.m. late. Mulder was behind the wheel and he’d thought Scully was asleep in the passenger seat, but then then ‘Landslide’ came on. The Stevie Nicks solo version. And suddenly her voice, sleepy and low and unassumingly lovely, joined Stevie’s gentle alto. “ _Even children get older_ ,” she sang. “ _And I’m getting older, too._ ”

Scully often claimed that she didn’t have any talent for song, that she could carry a tune only barely, but as the miles on the interstate flew by and the road unfolded like a dark ribbon in front of them, Mulder loved the sound of her voice more than anything in the world.

***  
Everything’s changed, but he still plays music. She’s glad for that. Glad that at least she has that one constant, but also glad it means they likely won’t have to talk very much. She’s not in a talking mood, hasn’t been in a talking mood for quite a while.

(He has an iPod now. So does she, so does practically everyone, but for whatever reason it surprises her; she forgets that Mulder has changed, that his life has grown and shifted without her. She has accused him of being too caught up in the past more times than she cares to count, but if she’s being honest with herself, she’s just as lost and unmoored there as he is.)

He has his iPod on shuffle, she assumes, and a lot of their old favorites play, but he has new music, too. Some she recognizes. Mumford and Sons, The Killers, Arcade Fire, The Head and the Heart. Some she doesn’t. Most of it she likes, and she’s fascinated and frightened in turns that they’re still so closely aligned, even in such small ways, even after so much time. 

She’s half-tempted to ask him to add some Laura Marling, some Sleater Kinney, some Valerie June. But she doesn’t. She won’t (can’t) let herself think that this could become a permanent fixture in her life again. This is his life. It’s not hers. 

_(And yet, she’d been the one to say, “I’m not sure that there’s a choice,” when he’d asked, “Are you ready for this, Scully?”_

_And yet. And still.)_

They’re a few hours into their drive when the familiar guitar of Eric Clapton’s ‘Promises’ tumbles out of the car’s speakers. Neither of them have sung along to anything, they haven’t even spoken, but damn if Scully doesn’t love this song; she’s always wished it were a duet, that Eric Clapton had sung the whole thing with a woman, not just the la’s. A woman to sing the first half of every verse, Eric Clapton to sing the second, their voices joining on the refrain.

So she’s always made the duet herself—as she fixes coffee, as she drives, as she’d packed up her things in boxes after the breakup that left her tattered and frayed. She makes it now, staring out the window at the trees blurring by, not paying much attention to anything but the sound of her own singing. It is deceptively low and throaty for someone as small as she, and she likes that about herself.

And suddenly, Mulder’s voice is joining hers, on the first refrain. She considers stopping. Music is a language like anything else, and she’s not sure what he’s trying to communicate, if she even wants to be sure. What she’d tell him if she were. But she doesn’t stop. 

She tries to recall if at some point she told Mulder about her duet idea; she knows they’ve absolutely listened to it at some other point, but she can’t pinpoint a conversation, can’t unravel it from the strange tapestry they built together. Somehow, though, he’s able to sense that that’s how she wants it sung; he’s able to sense when to come in, when to leave, where to harmonize, where to sing alone. She’s forgotten how nice their voices sound together. She’s forgotten a lot of things.

_“We made a vow/we’d always be friends/but how could we know that promises end?”_

It’s almost painfully apt, and in another life, where she’s younger, less tired, Scully might’ve cried.

The song fades out, and so do their voices. It must signal the end of whatever playlist Mulder had selected, because no other song comes on. Scully wonders what would happen if she took Mulder’s hand, if she traced the lines of his jaw, if she kissed his temple, still so familiar. But that’s all she does—wonder. 

Neither of them says anything for a long, long time.

**Author's Note:**

> The title clearly comes from Eric Clapton's "Promises" which is one of my most favorite songs ever. (Like Scully, I, too, have always wished it were a male/female duet.)
> 
> The “you don’t fuck with Thunder Road” line is actually something one of my favorite professors once said to her husbad who–incidentally–is also one of my favorite professors.
> 
> Shameless self-promotion: I made an 8tracks mix that vaguely goes along with the theme of this fic, and you can listen to it here http://8tracks.com/talkwordytome/even-children-get-older.


End file.
